India's newly-elected PM Modi hails landslide victory

NEW DELHI – India's newly-elected prime minister Narendra Modi thanked his supporters and hailed his Bharatiya Janata Party's historic election victory at a speech in his home state Gujarat on Friday.

“This is the first time in India’s independent history that a non-Congress federal government has been formed on its own,” Modi thundered, saying that the BJP with its allies would have more than 300 seats in parliament.

Modi said he deliberately chose to speak in his Vadodara constituency, where the crowd chanted his name. “Vadodara has given me a margin of 570,000 votes even though I spent only 50 minutes after filing nomination here,” he said.

“People made fun of me when I said we want all 26 seats of Gujarat but people of Gujarat have proved me right,” he said.

“The government doesn't belong to a few people. It belongs to 1.25 billion Indians,” he said, trying to emphasize the need for unity after an often divisive election campaign. “I am the number one mazdoor (labourer) and this country will not see a mazdoor like me in the coming 60 months,” he said, hinting at his humble background.

“I have not taken a single day vacation all these years,” he claimed, thanking voters in Vadodara and Gujarat for making him the chief minister four times. Modi also said India has to live up to the spirit of “development for all” terming it as a “DNA of our birth culture.” He also promised to live by India’s secular Constitution.